


Someone You Loved

by LynyrdLionheart



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: M/M, it starts out sad but gets better, season 4 finale fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 14:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18662350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LynyrdLionheart/pseuds/LynyrdLionheart
Summary: “I’m not going to pretend to understand what you’re going through.  But the way you’re relating to that couch is not unknown to me.”Conversations with the oddest people lead to Eliot finally managing to find his elusive happy ending.





	Someone You Loved

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone still bitter after that finale? Me too! So here's a fic that starts out super angsty, but eventually leads to a happy ending.
> 
> Inspired by "Someone You Loved" by Lewis Capaldi, which is so much more painful post-finale.

“I’m not going to pretend to understand what you’re going through.  But the way you’re relating to that couch is not unknown to me.”

              Another day – maybe in a hundred years, when everything hurt less – the words might have made Eliot smile.  He would have appreciated the callback, would have appreciated the way that Julia perched on the edge of the couch at his feet and looked at him, waiting for him to say something.

              But it wasn’t that day, and Eliot just curled onto his side, holding his body protectively around the rye he had poured.   He didn’t even particularly like the stuff – it reminded him too much of his father and everything he hated about himself – but it had been available and low effort.  Those descriptions fit his current requirements for survival. 

              “I don’t want company,” he said shortly, when it became clear that ignoring Julia wasn’t going to magically make her go away.

              “I know,” she said after a pause.  “But you probably shouldn’t be alone.”

              _Think I’ll kill myself?_ Was his scathing thought, and it made him feel sick.  Because there was some part of him that wondered if that wouldn’t be a little easier.

              If he were dead, he wouldn’t look at his hands, and imagine them soaked with the blood of so many people that didn’t deserve to be dead.

              If he were dead, he wouldn’t look at his friends and see the way they didn’t look back, not immediately.  Or the way, when they did look back, that they recoiled, just a bit, before they remembered that he wasn’t The Monster anymore. 

_If he were dead, he could be with Q._

That last thought was always the one that made him feel sickest.  Mostly because he wanted it so bad, and he knew that Quentin would _hate_ it. 

              Even when Q couldn’t fight for himself, he always fought for the people he loved.  Eliot was one of those people.  For a few brief, glorious minutes… he’d had the opportunity to be at the top of that list.

              _For fifty years he had been at the top of the list. Eliot and their son._

His hands shook as he tried to drink more of the rye, and he grimaced when it spilled over his hands and onto the couch, leaving him and the material smelling like cheap booze.  He was ready to just throw the glass to the floor and curl into himself when a hand appeared in his line of sight.

              Without a word, he let Julia take the alcohol, set it onto the coffee table, and then curled his legs up, hugged them to his chest and let a sob tear out.

              He was so sick of crying.  He was so sick of thinking he was in love, and then losing it. 

              _He was so sick of feeling_.

              Julia’s hand was warm over his, and he didn’t even quite realize what he was doing, before his fingers were clutching hers, holding onto the warmth of her like a lifeline.  He knew that the others mourned for Quentin, too… but Bambi, she had her focus on Fillory, and any grief she might feel was kept locked beneath that hard, glossy armor.  Alice would probably understand him, of course, but Alice came with a cocktail of guilt and jealousy that he just couldn’t quite handle, not on top of everything else.

              Not when part of him wanted to scream at her that maybe she had gotten Q’s last few days, but Eliot had gotten an entire _life_ with him, and how could her grief every compare?  Which wasn’t fair, but emotions so rarely were.

              But Julia… Julia understood this loss, without the jealousy, and clutching to her almost felt like clutching onto a piece Quentin himself.

              “When do we get a break,” he asked, when his sobs slowed, and he felt like maybe he’d be able to breathe again.  Maybe not clearly – maybe he’d never be able to do that again; maybe that was part of what grief was.  Learning how to breathe when every breath hurt, and living with it anyway.  “It’s been one thing after another.  The Beast, losing ourselves, Fillory, The Monster… when do we get a break?”

              Julia didn’t say anything, but Eliot suddenly found himself enveloped in warmth as she wrapped her arms around him.  Her body shook, and he could feel wet warmth at the collar of his shirt, where her tears were falling.  He froze for a minute, but then sat up, gently pushing her as he did so, until he could hug her, and let her cry into his shoulder.  It was a bit awkward – he and Julia didn’t have this kind of relationship, after all – but at the same time, when he buried his face in her hair and let the tears fall again, it felt somehow right.

              Julia might not have had fifty years in a different reality with Q… but she’d had close to a decade, which was closer than anyone else came.

              “I don’t know that we ever get a break,” she said at last, when the tears slowed, and they pulled apart, putting space between them, because they didn’t have that kind of relationship, and the awkward had begun to feel stronger than the… not awkward.  “Maybe we just keep on living and suffering until finally it catches up with us and we get to join Q wherever he went.”

              “That’s incredibly depressing.”

              Julia’s answering smile was weak and sad, and her shoulders looked as though they were weighed down. 

              “I can do magic again,” she said, and didn’t look nearly as happy at that as Eliot would expect. More than anyone Eliot knew, Julia loved magic.  “And it’s all because magic is suffering.  My best friend had to die so I could do a card trick.” She hugged her arms around her middle and looked away.  “Sorry.  I came here to help you.  This isn’t helpful.”

              “It’s not… unhelpful,” Eliot offered after a moment.  “We both lost him. We both…”

              Eliot trailed off, unable to say the words.  If this had happened before – before they’d had a life together, before he’d made the stupidest, most self-destructive choice of his life – he would have been able to finish it.  He would have been able to say that he loved Quentin Coldwater, without the words catching and tearing at his throat, because before that… they would have been true, but it also would have been _less_.

              Less love. Less hurt. Less _everything_.  And he would have been sad, but he wouldn’t be lifting a glass of cheap rye to his mouth and pouring it down his throat like he was dying of thirst, even as he hated the taste and all the memories it dredged up.

              “Want one?” he asked Julia, reaching for the bottle and a refill.  “I don’t have another glass, but you can use this one and I’ll just take right from the source.”

              She hesitated, and Eliot could tell that she was out of her depth with him. It was only fair – he’d been out of his depth with her, too.  Had offered an adventure, because he didn’t know what else to do.  They’d been so young, back then.  Now they were both adventured out, and there was nothing left to offer to distract him, nothing that he would accept anyway.

              “Sure,” she said instead. 

              Eliot still wanted to be alone.  But for the first time since Quentin had died, he found himself appreciating someone else, even if she was sitting the entire length of the couch away from him, probably wishing she was alone, too.

              For a little while, they would be alone together.

\---

              The thing about post-Quentin… is that there is no such thing.

              Not for Eliot, not really.  Time is supposed to heal all wounds, but his just stay gaping open, and no amount of helping Margo in Fillory, or trying to reclaim his lost glory from Todd is able to make them close. 

              He tried to hide them with that cheap rye, but it didn’t take that long to remember why the smell of the stuff made him sick, and it wasn’t just the memories that came with it.

              The first time he saw Alice after everything was in the Brakebills library.  Eliot wasn’t even sure why he was there – if he had homework, he couldn’t remember it, and Dean Fogg was being surprisingly forgiving with them all – but he found Alice hidden away at a quiet table, a letter opened in front of her. 

              “Don’t tell me they’re starting to handout warnings,” he said, after he spent about five minutes just watching her, and debating whether or not he should just walk away.  He hadn’t had much time to talk to Alice, after that drunken night with Q when they had all hurt her.  He had been too busy with Fillory, and she had been a Niffin, and then he had just been angry at her. 

              Probably unfairly angry, looking back.  He hadn’t felt that angry with Julia.  Maybe even then there had been some jealousy.  He would like to believe he was above such things… but then again, he could be such a petty bitch, and why pretend otherwise?

              “Eliot,” Alice said, and it was only when she straightened her shoulders and ran her hands over her hair, that he realized that she had been slumped in her seat.  Her eyes were red-rimmed, not as if she had been crying, but as though she could start at any time.  Eliot knew that feeling well.  He’d hit it with the red glaze of too much alcohol at first, but now his own eyes were like that too.

              Like he stood on the precipice of a breakdown that could arrive at any moment.

              “If they are,” he continued conversationally, “them I’m probably in trouble.  I don’t do much classwork these days.  They may not know how to find me.”

              “No.  They’re… being kind about that.  It’s a job offer.  From the library.”

              _The Library_.  Just the words made Eliot want to rage.  He wondered if maybe The Monster had left something behind in him – something that made the thought of wrapping his hands around a Librarian’s throat and just _squeezing_ until nothing was left so satisfying.  It frightened Eliot, that he could think like that.  Just like the nightmares – _the memories_ – he had, of what The Monster had done to stranger and friend alike frightened him. 

              His own hands frightened him.

              “You’re going to turn it down,” Eliot said immediately, because Alice hated the library more than any of them.  He’d heard bits and pieces, of the way they’d kept her locked up.  How she’d had to get assistance from _Plover_ of all people, to get away.  And how she must have hated that, because of them all, she had been the one most horrified by that house that immortalized Plover’s actions. 

              Yet Alice didn’t immediately agree with him, instead she looked at the letter. 

              “You’re considering it.” Eliot leaned back in his chair and stared Alice, not quite believing what was happening.  “After everything… _they’re the reason Quentin is dead_!”

              “Zelda is part of the reason _you’re_ here and The Monster isn’t!” Alice argued, her eyes flashing as she finally met his gaze.  “Everett is the reason that Quentin is dead. And yes, the Library fell for everything he said… but that’s _why_ I’m considering it, Eliot!  Standing out here, complaining about the things they do – that’s not going to change anything.  I have to at least consider this.  Consider making something… _good_ come out of it.  Out of losing Q.”

              “Nothing good is ever going to come out of it, Alice.”

              “I can’t sit here and be sad forever.  He wouldn’t have wanted it.  And I don’t want to do it.”

              It was a good line to storm away on; it would have made for a very dramatic exit.  But Alice stayed in her seat, her fingers folding the letter over and over again. 

              “Are you waiting for my blessing?” he asked at last, bitterness coating his tongue.  He hated Alice in that moment, and even more he hated himself, because he didn’t know if he was so angry because he truly thought she was making the wrong choice, or because the choice gave him an easy excuse to hate her.

              “Yes,” Alice breathed out, and Eliot went completely still.  He… hadn’t expected that to be her answer.  “I don’t know everything that went on with you and Q, El.  I get the feeling there’s more to it than what I know, and I won’t ask you about it.  I… I honestly don’t want to know.  I’m not sure I could handle knowing.  But you’re the only one who loved him like I did, and I need someone to tell me he wouldn’t hate me for this.”

              He could refuse to give her that absolution.  It was on the tip of his tongue to do so.  After all, while Eliot had spent that last of Q’s days locked inside of his own body, Alice had been there… had been able to touch him, to tell him how she felt.  She had gotten all the moments that Eliot didn’t, and in this one moment, he could make her feel just as terrible as he did. 

              God, it was tempting.

              “He wouldn’t hate you,” he said instead, because maybe Eliot could be a petty bitch… but he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her like that.  Not when it would do such a disservice to who Quentin was.  “I… I don’t think Quentin could ever hate you, Alice.  Not even when he wanted to.  And you know him – he loved to have a mission.  He’d probably understand needing a purpose better than anyone.”

              Alice let out a sob, and Eliot reached out, grasped her hand with his.  He didn’t know how long he sat there, letting her squeeze his fingers as the tears ran down her cheeks. 

              The next day, Alice Quinn took charge of the Library.

\---

              “I’m contemplating taking up heroin.”

              “I wouldn’t recommend it.  It sucks.  The addiction sucks.  The needles _really_ suck.  You should probably stick with alcohol.”

              Eliot almost laughed at that.  He wasn’t sure how he had wound up spending time with Kady, except that she had lost Penny, and didn’t seem to care if he never spoke to her at all, and he found something comforting about the apartment she had stolen from Marina. 

              There were memories here, from The Monster… but they didn’t seem quite as frightening.  Maybe because most of them involved Q, and Eliot was so desperate to see him again that he would even cling to nightmares, as long as they meant he didn’t forget Quentin’s face.

              “Are you actually reading a book?” Kady asked, setting a drink down next to Eliot, before she plopped onto a chair across the room from him.  “Did I know you could do that?”

              “I’m a man of man of surprises,” Eliot replied, glancing at the drink and seeing that it was something blue poured into a martini glass.  He let out a huff of amusement and glanced at Kady, who was looking pretty much anywhere but at him.  “You… you tried to get Penny back for a while.  Didn’t you?”

              “Penny was supposed to get back himself.  Instead he went to work for the Library.  Terrible way to not break up with someone.” Kady surveyed him over her own glass, and he was pretty sure it was the same cheap rye he had gorged himself on in the immediate aftermath of… everything. “Why?”

              “I just… enjoy philosophical conversations, I guess.”

              “Bull shit.  You’re looking for a way to bring Q back.”

              He expected her to follow it up with some comment about it being impossible.  Maybe something about needing to let go and move on, because it’s what Q would have wanted. 

              Well… if that’s what Quentin wanted, then he should have stuck around long enough to Eliot that himself. 

              “Alice knows more about it, but you’ll have to look into that Seam place if you want to try and do anything.”

              “Not going to tell me I’m wrong to do this?”

              Kady snorted into her rye, throwing the rest of it back. 

              “Everything sucks.  We’ve lost people we love too many times.  Alice is working for the freaking library.  Margo is… I dunno, a freedom fighter or something.  I’m trying to pull the Hedges back together.  Sometimes a purpose is the only thing that keeps us from falling apart.  If you want your purpose to be bringing Q back… well, he died so that Everett wouldn’t become a God.  I’m cool with saying screw you to the afterlife if you can.”

              Considering that it had stolen Penny from her, Eliot wasn’t entirely surprised that Kady had that mind set. 

              “The Hedges have some interesting books,” she added, setting her empty glass aside.  “I’ll see if there’s anything that can help you.”

              She turned on the TV after that – some mindless cooking show – and they didn’t say anything else.  But inside Eliot, the first stirrings of hope began. 

              Maybe… maybe this didn’t have to be the end.

\---

              “Letting him have free reign isn’t-”

              “This section here is everything we have on the Underworld. And death in general.  It’s kind of grim, but also sort of interesting.  There are things here I didn’t even know about as a Niffin.”

              Eliot had to bite back a smirk, at the expression on Zelda’s face as Alice completely disregarded her worries over allowing him to look for anything he needed in the library.

              “Death isn’t something that can just be overcome!” Zelda said with a sigh in her voice.  “Quentin’s book has been completed.”

              “Lots of books get finished without their story being over,” Alice replied with a sharp look over her shoulder.  “That’s what sequels are for.”

              Zelda’s expression tightened, but she finally just shook her head and left.  Eliot waited until the sounds of her heels disappeared before finally grinning at Alice.

              “This librarian things suits you,” he stated.  “It shouldn’t surprise me. You always had the fashion sense for the role.”

              “Are you really going to insult my style when I can have you kicked out at any time?” Alice replied, but there was no heat in the question.  Instead, her expression turned a little sad.  “Eliot, I really hope you can actually figure something out… but Zelda isn’t wrong.  Death isn’t just another quest we can beat.  The chances of there being something here…”

              “He never gave up on us, Alice.  Either of us.  Let me at least try to not give up on him.”

              His days fell into a schedule.  He went to class at Brakebills – and thanks to Julia he actually passed his classes.  He spent hours in the Library, reading about death and how there wasn’t a God damn thing he could do to beat it.

              Sometimes, he would take a break.  To help Margo in Fillory, or to lend Kady and her Hedgewitches a hand.  Once, he even went to the movies with Julia and Penny-23, who hadn’t seemed entirely impressed, but somehow it had been nice anyway.

              It made Eliot realize he kind of missed their own Penny.  It had been somewhat of a surprise realization.

              He considered giving up, because he was getting nowhere and Eliot wasn’t made for research.  This was an Alice or a Julia thing, and he was probably doing it all wrong.

              And then he found it.  A footnote to a footnote that led to a paragraph, and he managed to convince Penny-23 to take him into the Mirror World, to where the entrance to the Seam had once existed.

              It was stupid.

              It was fairy tale bull shit.

              But so was Fillory.  So were castles and monsters and beasts… and hell, _magic_ was a fairy tale for most.

              The spell was deceptively simple, but the magic wasn’t the hard part.  Not at all. 

              “Q,” Eliot breathed, because there he was.  His hair was shorter than what it had been, before The Monster.  Eliot had those memories of it like that, but this was the first time he got to see it himself, outside a brief glimpse after he had been stabbed by axes. 

              “Eliot,” Quentin looked around, as though he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.  “I’m… what are you doing here?  What am _I_ doing here?”

              “I… magic,” Eliot said at last, and wasn’t their world so odd, that he could say that with utter sincerity, and have it be a legitimate explanation.  “There are more spells available to us these days.  Alice has a more traditional view on how libraries should be run – knowledge for everyone, instead of just a select few.”

              “Alice is a Librarian.  _Our_ Alice?”

              Did he know the way that Eliot’s heart sung, that he called her _our_ Alice – a reference to their friendship – rather than _my_ Alice?  Eliot doubted it.  He doubted that Quentin even realized he had done it. 

              “It’s a long story.  She’d love to tell it to you.”

              Quentin froze at that, and Eliot wished he could reach out and touch him.  But that wasn’t an option.  If he tried, his hand would simply go through Quentin.  He wasn’t there, not entirely. Not yet.  Because that was what made this spell hard. 

              It could only be successful if the spirit summoned really, _truly_ wanted to come home again.

              It could only work if the caster were really, truly that home.

              He should have gotten Alice to do this.  Alice… or Julia.  Someone who wasn’t the jerk that turned him down after a _lifetime_ together.  A lifetime of memories and love and a son together.  They’d had _grandchildren_ , and somehow Eliot had still managed to ruin it.

              “I’m dead, El,” Quentin said softly.  “I won’t be hearing any stories… I saw the fire.  I’m sorry that… I’m sorry.”

              Eliot stared at him.

              “It wasn’t your fault,” he managed to choke out at last.  “You saved the world… but we really miss you, Q.”

              “I really miss you, too,” Quentin replied.  “But… it’s not so bad.  My dad is here.  I have more of a relationship with him these days than I ever did in life, which is kind of weird.  Penny is a lot easier to get along with dead. He’s kind of bossy, and busy… but we make time.  It’s… nice.  Peaceful.”

              Did he know that he was breaking Eliot’s heart with every word he said?  Every mention of the afterlife being a nice place drove a dagger right into the center of Eliot’s being, destroying him a little bit more.

              “El?” Quentin asked after a moment, as if realizing how quiet Eliot had gone.  “What’s wrong?”

              _Let him go.  Let him be with his dad.  Let him have_ peace _._

He would never find that in the living world, after all.  It was messy there.  It was messy and painful, and life was just a series of quests tied together by day drinking and a joint desire to survive for… why?

              Quentin looked happy.  The last time Eliot had seen Quentin look happy was…

              _Fillory, and fifty years of memories.  A life well lived._

Something beautiful.

              They had made something beautiful and fulfilling.  And maybe Eliot had tried to ruin it… but he was tired of running scared.

              _Know that when I’m braver, it’s ‘cause I learned it from you._

He had said those words to the Quentin of his memories.  That kiss had been so very sweet, but empty.  Because Eliot couldn’t rewrite history.  He couldn’t undo the way he had hurt the man he loved.

              But now he could be braver.  He could keep his word.  Was he really going to fail Quentin again?

              “I lied to you,” he said at last, and Quentin stared at him in confusion.  “I lied to you, when I said we wouldn’t choose that life.  The one we had together.  I would.  I would choose it every single time.  I have done a lot of things I regret, but that lie… that lie is the worst of them all.”

              “Eliot,” Quentin whispered, closing his eyes, his expression pained.  “Why are you telling me this now?  I… I can’t come back.  And I swear if this is you trying to join me, I will never forgive you.”

              “You can come back.  You just need to want it.  More than you want to be dead.”

              Quentin’s eyes popped open, and Eliot felt his throat choke up.  He knew what he was asking now.  He was asking someone who had always kind of wanted to die… to want to live more. 

              He might be asking the impossible.

              “I… it hurts, El,” Quentin said at last.  “Every day, it hurts.  It doesn’t hurt there.”

              “I know, Q.  I know,” Eliot whispered, wishing so much that he could touch the other man.  But that was part of this spell.  There was no tether allowed to pull them in.  They had to take that step themself.

              And that meant Eliot had to be worth it… and when had he been worth anything in his life?

              Warm hands cupped his cheeks, and Eliot found himself gaping, because there was Quentin, right in front of him, _touching him_.

              Warm… and _alive_.

              “I thought when it happened, that maybe I had just found a way to give up,” Quentin said, pulling Eliot’s head down so their forehead’s touched.  “But I don’t want to give up, Eliot.  It might not hurt there… but no pain means there’s nothing else, either.  And it’s everything else that makes it worth it.  I’m not ready to not feel pain.  Not yet.”

              Eliot knew he was crying, but he didn’t care, and Quentin didn’t seem to care either, because he was crying too.  They were crying and hugging, and then they were kissing.  And this kiss wasn’t empty. This kiss was full, and warm and kind of messy with hands tangling in hair, and their noses bumping a little awkwardly. 

              It was beautiful, in the messy way that only life could be beautiful. 

\---

_It seems rather too easy, doesn’t it?_

That was the consensus.  But for once the consensus was wrong.  Because Eliot knew that touching him was the hardest damn decision that Quentin had ever made.

              Eliot couldn’t promise there wouldn’t be times that Q would regret it… but he could promise to make it all worth it in the end.

              And he did.


End file.
